(News Punch) The U.N. food chief David Beasley has issued a dire prediction for the world next year, warning that we are facing “a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm” and we are set to face “Hell on Earth” food shortages in 2023.
Action must be taken now at the executive level as well as the individual level, World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said in an Associated Press interview. “Otherwise, there’s gonna be chaos all over the world.”
Beasley said that when he took the helm of WFP five years ago, only 80 million people around the world were headed toward starvation. “And I’m thinking, Well, I can put the World Food Program out of business,” he said.
“Within that are 50 million people in 45 countries knocking on famine’s door,” Beasley said. “If we don’t reach these people, you will have famine, starvation, destabilization of nations unlike anything we saw in 2007-2008 and 2011, and you will have mass migration.”
“We’ve got to respond now.”
Beasley has been meeting world leaders and speaking at events during this week’s General Assembly gathering of leaders to warn about the food crisis.
General Assembly President Csaba Korosi noted in his opening address Tuesday that “we live, it seems, in a permanent state of humanitarian emergency.” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that conflicts and humanitarian crises are spreading, and the funding gap for the U.N.’s humanitarian appeals stands at $32 billion — “the widest gap ever.”
